The man was a vision out of Rodney's worst nightmares. The Japs may have been the enemy, but at least they were a known entity. They had cities and cars and electricity and clothes, for Pete's sake. And they may have slit your throat as soon as look at you, but they didn't eat you when they were done. At least not that he'd ever heard of.
But this guy? This guy looked… Dear Lord, if he didn't look hungry. He wasn't very tall but his body was a hulking mass of mud-tattooed muscle. His face bore streaks of yellow and if there wasn't a bone through his nose, there were feathers pierced through his ears and woven into the nest of short dreads piled on top of his head.
As Rodney's gaze dropped lower he gulped and found himself muttering a bastardized version of the prayers his nana used to say over worn rosary beads. Around the man's sagging stomach he wore a thin rope of hemp-like plant fiber upon which hung several dried bones. They looked ominously like human finger bones.
Naked as the day he'd been spawned from Hell, the man was more frightening than a whole squadron of Japs with handguns and bayonets.
Ronon scooted backwards, carrying Sheppard's unconscious body with him as he tried to put his bulk between the native and the injured pilot.
Crabbing as best as he could with one hand and the medkit, Rodney inched along the embankment, his eyes never leaving the stranger with the spear. He had only made it about a foot when his back hit something firm and unyielding. He looked up to see, oh, God, why don't they wear clothing? Another native, this one shorter and fatter and with a few less accessories. His stomach thankfully sagged over his… but it served as meager cover.
Rodney's mind started racing as he thought about how a man could get so fat living on fruit and rodents and then he realized there was no way one could ,which had his heart racing so fast he waited for it to stutter to a stop like a misfiring engine. At least dead he wouldn't have to watch as they started on his limbs…
The first native (Rodney wouldn't allow himself to think headhunter) barked out a command and five more forms emerged from the jungle. They were now completely surrounded.
Ronon growled and pulled Sheppard in tighter while his hand scrambled through the mud and foliage. His hand curled around a rock as big as a grapefruit and he lifted it in feeble warning.
Their CO stirred in the gunner's arms and moaned as his eyes fluttered open. "Whaa? Wha's goin' on?" he asked dazedly.
"Just some friends dropping by," Rodney said with false cheer. "Nice natives, right? Nice? You think they know Teyla?" he asked sideways at Ronon.
Ronon's eyes stayed pinned on Feathers, his fingers white-knuckling the rock. And when did he lose his handgun? "Don't think so, McKay."
"Yeah, be too much to ask, huh?" Rodney said tiredly.
As Sheppard roused further he caught sight of their presumed captors and possible devourers. His hand went to his hip automatically, looking for the handgun that normally rode there. But its holster was not just empty but ripped and hanging, a tatter of fabric flapping in the rain.
Figures the two who could actually hit the broad side of a barn had both lost their weapons.
Rodney's gun was still in its holster. He could feel it digging into his hip, pinned between him and the mud bank, and also, of course, on the side with his broken wrist.
Taking a firm clamp on the inside of his cheeks with his teeth, he tried to both subtly lift his ass high enough to get at his .45 and get the fingers of his bad right hand to unsnap the weapon free, all while a hundred and fifty kilos of cannibal stared at him from half a meter away.
He failed at the subtlety part, especially when a cry broke free past his chewed shut cheeks as broken bones grated against each other. But not a one of the natives even blinked.
Easing it out of its leather holder, Rodney switched the gun to his left hand and aimed it at Feathers, assuming the fancy headgear made him the chief or whatever cannibals had.
There was some murmuring from the natives but it was silenced with a sharp rebuke from Feathers. The chieftain took a step forward, towards Rodney.
"Shoot him, McKay!" Ronon hissed.
Rodney's left hand was wavering, his position awkward and tenuous on the muddy riverbank. But he managed to keep a bead on the middle of Feathers' bare chest.
Sheppard was so out of it he was still feeling around for his lost weapon, and it seemed the whole drama was playing out without him in the audience.
"Take the shot, McKay!"
There was no need to take his eyes off his target; he could hear the fury in Ronon's voice.
It would be easy enough, right? Six bullets in the gun, six natives dead or dying.
But there was something in the way that Feathers never wavered in his stance, just met Rodney's gaze, unblinkingly calm.
Rodney had never killed a man. Two years spent in this godforsaken place, and he had never been individually responsible for the death of another human being, Japanese or otherwise. Sure, he had felt the little thrill of triumph and relief when pursuing enemy planes spiraled away, leaving nothing but a trail of dark smoke behind. But he had never pulled a trigger or released a bomb. He had sat and prayed and hoped for the death of the enemy, but had never taken life himself, and he never wanted to.
How ironic that it was the whole reason why he was in Guinea in the first place.
Feathers waited him out, and must have determined on his own that the soft white man was no threat. With a wave of his hand and a few grunted words, several of his men converged on their small group while one took off silently through the jungle, barely rustling the thick foliage as he went.
"D-don't come any closer!" Rodney shouted, waving the gun in what he hoped was a threatening manner.
But the natives completely ignored him and closed in on Ronon and Sheppard.
The gunner let out a wild cry and struggled with raising the rock while keeping a grip on their semi-conscious CO. Rodney had suspected that Ronon had a concussion, could tell from the big man's occasional missteps and fumblings that something was wrong. And the way he held his head with closed eyes and breath held, when he thought Rodney wasn't looking, told him all he needed to know, genius that he was. And of course there was their trip down the mountainside riding the mudslide that could have added injuries too numerous to contemplate.
Whatever it was, the hand holding the rock aloft wavered and then dropped. Ronon shook his head, as if trying to clear his vision, and he frantically pulled Sheppard in closer to his chest while clearly fighting to keep his eyes open and focused.
And still, Rodney couldn't pull the trigger. And still Feathers held his eyes with his, a calm, almost fatherly look in them. Then the chief raised an open hand and slowly lowered it while maintaining their shared gaze. Rodney found himself echoing the native's motion, lowering the gun as if hypnotized, though he knew he wasn't; it was silly nonsense to start with and he was much too strong-willed to succumb so easily if it wasn't.
But nonetheless, he followed the silent direction while desperately hoping he wasn't consigning them all to a stew pot.
The rock was easily- too easily- taken from Ronon's grasp. Two natives gripped the much bigger man under the armpits and raised him to his feet.
Rodney was relieved to see it was more aid than dragging at least, though they stayed flanking the gunner on each side.
The slightest sound of breaking twigs and the hiss of bodies passing through wet leaves was the only herald to the arrival of several more natives bearing two long pieces of bamboo.
Scenes from movies Rodney had seen as a child of the headhunters tying the hapless explorers onto spits and propping them up over raging fires flitted through his head and he moaned as they closed in on Sheppard's body. But as they moved Rodney saw the bamboo part and he noted vines strung between the two sturdy trunks. It was crudely constructed travois.
They lifted the pilot onto it; Sheppard struggled in their hands only briefly before going limp and they quickly lashed him into the stretcher before heading off into the jungle. The two with Ronon didn't prod but they waited until he stepped into place and followed the stretcher before doing the same.
Rodney looked back to see that Feathers was still staring at him. The chief gave a small nod and waited as Rodney clambered to his feet. After slipping in the mud, trying to get his feet under him and bracing himself with the hand still clutching the gun, he startled as he felt a hand slip under his arm. The fat native helped him to his feet and Rodney stuttered out a 'thanks' before making a decision and shoving the gun into his waistband. He swept up the medkit and joined the caravan through the jungle, destination completely unknown.
After what seemed an interminable trek that wound through foliage so thick and lush that it blocked out most of the feeble sunlight, up a steep incline and then down a crumbling and slippery slope, along a river where large dark shapes lurked just under its waters and ominous splashing sounds greeted their encroachment, and finally along an almost discernable path of mud and foot-flattened greenery, they emerged into a small clearing at the foot of a mountain.
A community of huts, made of bamboo, branches and dried grass and held together with mud and what smelled suspiciously like excrement of some species, crouched like a fairy ring of toadstools surrounded by jungle.
A few of the natives stared at the motley crew as Feathers directed those bearing Sheppard's litter to one of the larger huts.
Ronon was clearly on the verge of collapse; the big man's feet were dragging and catching on every rut and root and he stumbled, about to fall, and was kept upright only with the help of his two guards.
Rodney knew how he felt.
Days now with little in the way of fresh water, no food aside from the small snake filet and the occasional fruit that Ronon had picked for them, and the pain of his broken wrist gnawing at him like a dog with an old bone was wearing him down to fumes.
He felt his own feet start to betray him, his knees weaken, at several points in their journey, with only his dubious buddy to prop him up. It felt wrong, thinking of the man who was helping him as Fatty, but since the man wore nothing else as an indicator, there was nothing else coming immediately to mind. And if the name was good enough for Fatty Arbuckle, he figured the cannibal wouldn't mind.
Several small children, laughing and playing with a mangy dog, heedless to the pouring rain, stopped and stared with slack jaws at them. They pointed and muttered in their strange, vowel-laden language as their group passed by.
Rodney followed into the hut and allowed himself to collapse into a cross-legged half sprawl against the hut wall, out of the way. The natives laid Sheppard out on a woven straw mat and bade Ronon lay down on another.
A few minutes later three women entered the hut.
One woman was huge, even bigger than Rodney's friend Fatty. A straw skirt to her knees was her only covering and her massive, pendulous breasts hung onto her broad, generous belly. Her sopping wet hair was long and graying, with different colored dyed twine or yarn wrapped around tiny braids, making her look a little like Raggedy Ann with rainbow hair. Deep wrinkles ran from the corners of her eyes in the leathery skin of her face.
The other two women were a much younger with yellow, rain-streaked mud painted whorls on their arms and bellies and they had dyed some of the fronds on their grass skirts as well.
The big woman walked over to Sheppard and with assistance from one of the guards, they helped ease her slowly to her knees. She laid her hand on his cheek, then ripped open his shirt and bent to place her ear to his chest.
A few seconds later she lifted her head, her expression inscrutable. Then she clapped her hands twice and her helpers pulled small but deadly looking knives from their skirts.
"W-wait a second!" Rodney cried, lurching forward, trying to get to his feet. "What the hell are you doing?"
His gluttonous guardian put a hand to his chest and pushed him back down to sit on the floor with a silencing glare.
Rodney watched in horror as the two women walked up to the unconscious man, knives clutched with deadly purpose. Then heaved a sigh of relief that had him almost melting onto the mud floor of the hut as they used the knives to begin slitting the man's clothing into pieces. The razor sharp blades made short work of the wet and muddy uniform, leaving him completely naked on the mat only a minute later. The older woman then took one of the knives and sliced through the fabric holding the splints around Sheppard's mangled leg.
Without hesitation she bent over and, only an inch from his ankle, took a deep sniff. She scowled and shook her head, then turned and uttered something to the litter bearers. Two rushed over and helped her back to her feet. Rodney noticed how deferential they were to her; she was clearly someone of authority here.
Ronon had remained quiet on his mat, but his head was turned and he'd been at least trying to keep an eye on what they'd been doing with his CO. When he saw the girls approaching him with the knives he growled and sat up, waving them off but listing to the side.
The big woman grabbed Ronon's face in her hand and pulled it to her. He glared balefully right back at her but didn't withdraw from her grip. She stared into his eyes, then turned him roughly to each side to look at his ears. What passed for a neurological exam in deepest Guinea apparently done, she released her hold and turned away without a word.
Over to Rodney.
As the hulking woman waddled his way Rodney shrank back against the hut wall, cradling his injured arm in a protective huddle around his middle. "No, no. Uh-uh, no way you're practicing your voodoo on me!"
The woman stopped and cocked her head. "What is this voooodoooo?" she said in broken but clearly understandable English.
Rodney's eyes grew wide and he found himself at a rare loss for words. "You. You…"
"I speak the English, yessir," she confirmed with a nod. "Fathers taught me long time before."
"Your… your father taught you English?"
"My father. Your father. All our father. And Father who art in heaven, too."
Rodney could only blink at that.
"Missionaries, McKay," came Ronon's tired voice. "They musta come by here years ago."
"Oh, fathers… priests! Okay, okay… are um, any of the fathers still around?"
"Oh, nosir. Some have the blood fever, some have the spots. Some leave to talk to other children and not come back."
"Ch-children?"
"Yessir, all Father's children, the fathers say. They want to tell others. I tell them the Devil is with the others, they are not like us, but still they go. And they not come back," she repeated with a sad shake of her head.
Rodney gulped back his revulsion at what he could only imagine happened to the priests who tried to preach to the Others. He was still trying to dispel the image of heads on stakes when another person entered the hut.
This one was a tiny, wizened old man. He was toothless and his cheeks sank in, leaving him looking like an apple left out in the sun. His one eye was cloudy white but the other was sharp, like the dark beady eye of a raptor. His hair was solid gray but clumped into dreadlocks with yellow mud. More yellow mud colored his close gray beard and sideburns. His only garb consisted of several strings of hemp-like plant fiber around his middle from which hung dried plants, small bones, and several small cloth pouches and a a… Rodney had only seen them in National Geographic, couldn't remember what the anthropologists called them. But the man had a dried gourd over his privates.
He walked over to the big woman and stood on his tiptoes to rub his cheek against hers as he petted her long yarnlike hair before turning the hawk eye on Rodney.
"The fathers make him David. David was small but he slew the mighty Goliath," she added solemnly.
Rodney took a deep breath and allowed himself a brief moment of believing this was all a nightmare, brought on by a typical rancid mess hall meal and too much rum punch before bed.
"And, what… what did the fathers make you?" he finally managed to ask politely.
"They make me Martha," she said with the first smile Rodney had seen her offer. Her teeth were stained red, which Rodney knew was from the betel gum that the island people enjoyed. "They say Martha knew not the Father but opened her home and heart to him," she recited proudly. "Fathers tell me I do the same for them."
"Martha is a nice name," Rodney said with an answering if a bit tentative smile. "I'm Rodney. I... I don't think there's a um, Rodney in the Bible. Sorry."
She happily seemed unoffended by his name. She turned and waved a hand towards Sheppard.
"What did fathers make dying man?"
"D-dying? Why do you say dying? He's not- he's not dying," he tried more firmly. "And his name is John. John Sheppard, and there are both Johns and shepherds in the Bible," he added inanely.
She made a tsking noise with her mouth and murmured something to David. He got a knowing look on his face and went over to tend to the unconscious pilot.
"The shepherd's blood has smell of death, yessir. He is hot as a stone left by the fire pit." Then she folded her hands as a child would for bedtime prayers. "Does the shepherd know the Father?"
"Know the- does Sheppard know - you mean God? Does he believe in God?" Rodney screeched incredulously. Leaving aside the fact that he really didn't have a clue what the pilot did or didn't believe, the fact that she was so calmly ready to resign him to death had him apoplectic. He rose shakily to his feet, locking his knees in place and leaning heavily against the hut wall.
"No! No, he's not ready to go to God, or whatever," he said with a groan.
Martha nodded once and fixed Rodney with a resolute look. "If the shepherd does not know the Father, he must be given time to learn Him." Then she turned on her heel with a grace belying her size and walked over to join David at Sheppard's mat side.
Rodney could only look on incredulously. He turned to see Ronon had been listening to the exchange.
"Sounds like you gave her the right answer, McKay."
Rodney let out a shuddering breath and sagged back down the wall. "It's not like these people are going to be able to help him anyway," he remarked morosely. "And we're giving him time for what? We both know there's no rescue coming; we'll just end up three more hash marks on the missing, presumed dead scorecard."
"McKay-"
"No, Ronon. Just... God, I'm tired." A few still ragged breaths later he finally slumped over onto his side, curled up and fell asleep on the mud floor.
He awoke to an annoying tickle on his face. He wrinkled his nose and grimaced but the tickling just… moved. To his lip.
With a sputtered cry and his left hand batting painfully at his face, Rodney sat up and opened bleary eyes in time to see the shadow of something with way too many legs skitter off underneath the hut wall he was still curled against.
He shuddered with revulsion and made another cautious swipe at his face. Gah, but he hated bugs.
The hut was dark but for a small clay pot over near Sheppard's mat. A pungent, herbaly smell wafted from the flame that licked out its opening.
Martha and her two helpers were hovering over his body; the big woman's bulk blotted out Rodney's view of what they were doing.
Ronon was snoring on his mat. Another, larger clay pot sat next to him and Rodney caught of whiff of bile that roiled his stomach. For a change, he was just as glad it was empty.
He rolled his head about slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness and trying to ease the kinks from his neck and back. With every wince, he vowed never again would he complain about his ratty old cot and thin gray linen covered pillow back at base.
As he lifted his hand to rub at a stubborn knot in his neck he paused to stare at the freshly wrapped splint that covered his right wrist. The swelling had abated somewhat and the pain had been tamped down to a sharp ache.
He licked his dry lips and tried to remember what he'd eaten that could've left such an acrid taste in his mouth. A vague memory of his mouth being forced open and a paste of chewed leaves made him shiver but he had to admit, he had expected to be in a hell of a lot more pain.
A loud groan issued from Ronon's mat as the big man stirred and sat partially up, his eyes remaining clamped shut. One of the young women crept over, pulling the clay pot closer before easing him onto his side. She spoke quietly to him, as Rodney braced for the vomiting to come, but Ronon settled back down and seemed to go back to sleep.
Finally working up enough energy to climb to his knees, Rodney stiffly, painfully crabbed his way over to see what Martha and her nursemaids were doing.
He immediately regretted doing so as when he saw what was being done to the injured man.
Sheppard was still naked, but he'd been painted in swirls and symbols with various colors of mud and drying clumps of plant paste. A sheen of sweat coated him from stem to stern and his face, under his now three-day-old beard and the eggplant bruise that encompassed his nose and both eyes, glowed palely in the meager light from the pot lamp. In odd counterpoint to the ritualistic mud markings were a smudge of soot on the man's forehead and over his heart, a crudely drawn cross in charcoal. A rosary of purple glass beads lay in the middle of his chest; it rose and fell with each slow, stuttering breath the sick man took.
But the worst part of the whole bizarre display was the squirming, writhing leeches that were latched onto the grotesquely swollen ankle and knee joints. The nasty creatures were sucking greedily and were bloated to the size of a man's thumb.
"Oh, my God! What are you doing?" Rodney hissed. He lunged forward, thinking only of getting those things off of Sheppard.
Martha had only to reach out with one beefy arm to fend him off, almost knocking him onto his ass in the process. "Nosir," she said with a stern shake of her head. "They suck out the bad spirits."
"Bad spirits? What is this, the Dark Ages? Gah, why am I asking? This is more Pleistocene than fifth century."
Even in the near dark Rodney could see the calmly puzzled stare that Martha had fixed him with. He wiped a shaky hand down his own sweat-covered face and sighed. "They are parasites, probably carrying any number of diseases and you have put them around his open wounds, Martha. Please take them off."
At that she smiled and waved a hand. "They will be off when it is their time to be off." Of course, just as she completed her off koan-like pronouncement one of the largest of the leeches dropped off onto the floor of the hut. Martha's smile broadened into a red-toothed grin as she plucked up the now only sluggishly writhing beast between two thick fingers and dropped it onto the fire pot. There was a needle thin roil of black smoke as the leech wriggled fruitlessly in the flames. A few seconds later there was a high-pitched keening noise and while the analytical part of Rodney's brain (arguably the largest part) was saying it was fluids in the soft creature's body that were heating to boiling and air was escaping as its flesh split, it sounded to the more primal part of his brain like the thing's dying scream.
He shivered violently despite the oppressive heat. Then his gaze narrowed and he leaned over to squint in the dim light. He was clearly in the throes of a hallucinogenic drug or maybe he burned with a sky high fever of his own because it almost looked like the swelling had come down some around the breaks in Sheppard's leg.
Maybe he really was losing it.
"Looks better, doesn't it?"
Rodney whipped his head around, wincing at the white-hot lance of pain that ran down his neck into his shoulder blades, to see the glint of Ronon's eyes in the firelight. The big man had rolled onto his side facing their CO and had a ringside seat to the bizarre circus going on around Sheppard.
"Sure, yeah, I guess so," Rodney said but while shaking his head. "That and a nickel'll get him a cup of coffee."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
With an aggrieved sigh Rodney sat back on his butt and scooched until the wall supported him once more. "It means he'll die of his head injury or internal bleeding or blood poisoning before we ever had to worry about his leg."
"They're doing what they can, McKay," Ronon replied quietly with a look dashed at their nurse.
Martha seemed utterly unconcerned with their conversation as she continued to fuss over Sheppard and her slimy black pets.
"I know they are, but somehow I don't think mud and leeches are gonna do much for him. Maybe we should've let the Nips take us."
The gunner growled, low and long.
"I'm serious, Ronon! The Nips may be evil little sonsbitches but they have modern medicine. At least Sheppard would've had a fighting chance!"
Ronon's eyes narrowed. "You really think Sheppard would've rather been a prisoner? Maybe I'm not the only one with a head injury." Then he rolled onto his back and draped his arm across his eyes in clear dismissal.
Dandy. The one person who was conscious and spoke more than rudimentary English was now not speaking to him.
He allowed a moment of self-pity, rubbing at the throb in his arm as he watched Martha finish up with whatever island voodoo she was performing. She must've been satisfied because she spoke a few words to her helpers. The two girls helped the big woman to her feet and she brushed dried mud from her wrinkly knees.
"Is that it?" Rodney asked.
Martha cocked her head. "If the shepherd lives through the night--"
"If?" he squeaked back. He heard Ronon shift on his mat and knew the big man had heard.
"The shepherd burns hot, Rodney," the woman replied. His name sounded odd from her tongue. "The cooling mud can draw some heat but it is not enough. We have little good water left and it is for drinking. The other men, the ones you fight. They make everyone who goes for more good water dead." She mimed shooting a gun.
Sheppard had tried to warn HQ of Teyla's intel, that the Japanese had sewn up all the fresh water supplies on the island. When the first wave of Marines hit the beaches they would quickly find themselves without fresh water, and in this heat, it would be deadly.
Snapping his fingers as fast as his mind was working, Rodney gestured at the pot holding the still smoldering fire. "Do you have any more of those?"
Martha nodded slowly. "Many."
"Good." With a purpose now, Rodney felt his aches and pains fade into the background. He stood shakily and walked over to the pack he'd clung to throughout their jungle adventure. "I can make more good water, Martha." He fumbled with holding the pack and opening it with his one good hand then pulled out the glass bottle with the remaining water purification tablet.
When he looked up one of the native girls had already returned with an earthenware container of water. The girl handed it over with a few softly spoken words.
Rodney dropped the pack and reached over for the pot of water. When the big woman seemed reluctant to give it to him he gave her the universal gimme sign with his hand.
"This water is not good, Rodney," she said, still clinging to the pot. "Those who drink it have sickness, make muddy water from their insides and die."
Rodney's stomach lurched at the actually well-described symptom of dysentery. He held aloft the jar with the single little white Halazone tablet. "You have your magic, Martha, and I have mine. Only my magic, is science." He dumped the last tablet into the pot and poked his fingers in to crush it into powder, then stirred. "See, you just oxidize a little dichloramine-T with potassium permanganate in a mildly alkaline medium, like, say, sodium carbonate and boom! Bob's your uncle, you've got a chlorine salt that bleaches away all the bad stuff in the water." He licked the water off a finger and grimaced happily at the metallic taste.
Martha crossed herself as Rodney tipped the bowl to his lips and took a small sip.
"There. A little water and Sheppard'll perk right up," he said with conviction in his voice only. He walked over and eased down to his knees next to the pilot. "A little help here?" he said querulously as he realized how hard it would be one handed.
One of the girls dashed a questioning look at Martha. The big woman hesitated but finally nodded. The girl joined Rodney and helped lift Sheppard's head and shoulders while Rodney eased the pot rim to his CO's lips.
"C'mon, Major," he urged. "Just a little water. Sorry I don't have rum."
The water went into the man's mouth but just pooled and dribbled down his cheeks.
With a sigh of defeat Rodney put the water down. "Maybe later," he murmured while awkwardly patting the man's shoulder. Heat radiated from his skin and Rodney noticed that the sheen of sweat had evaporated and not been replaced.
He felt a hand on his own shoulder and looked over to see Ronon had resumed his watchful position from his own mat.
"Nice try, McKay. Maybe we can get him to drink some when he wakes up."
Rodney let his head drop to his chest. "He's dying, Ronon," he whispered. "And there's not a damn thing we can do about it. Maybe if we'd stayed in the jungle, we could've held out until the landing. Or found a way to make it to shore. Get a signal fire going. You were right. I shouldn't've let them take us… I should've used the gun."
Ronon clapped him hard on the back. "If you'd shot one the rest would've killed us on the spot, McKay. And we'd still be stuck in the jungle and Sheppard would be dead. You did the right thing. You're at least giving him a chance. In fact, the fat lady sent one of her men off to get help."
"Help from whom?" Rodney asked doubtfully.
"Back at the base? I dunno. She's really set on saving Sheppard's life, I guess so she has time to save his soul."
Not even enough energy left to reply, Rodney curled up on his side between the two men and closed his eyes, allowing himself a cowardly retreat into sleep.
He awoke with a start and dread heavy in his empty stomach. He was afraid to open his eyes and see Sheppard cold and dead mere inches away. But he forced them open, all at once, like ripping a bandaid off.
The hut was empty except for Rodney and the still thankfully breathing Sheppard. It was daylight, or what passed for it in monsoon season. The hiss of a steady downpour and the spatter as it pelted the roof of the hut were the only sounds.
The leeches were mercifully gone but nothing else had changed during the night. Sheppard's chest still rose and fell in a slow and stuttery cadence and all the bizarre mud and charcoal markings were still there.
Glancing self-consciously around the empty hut, Rodney picked up the rosary beads. As his fingers caressed the smooth, cool glass an image of his mom suddenly hit him. His dad was a man of science. His mom, on the other hand, had a belief system that mixed equal parts Catholicism with the mystical. She knocked wood and fretted over broken mirrors while whispering Hail Marys and the Lord's Prayer. She attended church on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays for the whole three hour Latin mass, but Friday nights would often find her in her friend Helen's parlor where they would gather around a ouija board with their cigarettes and old fashioneds. The first Saturday of every month was her visit to Madame Marushka's house. The crazy old Polish lady smelled of mothballs and cat piss but his mother would sit for an hour while the Madame laid out tarot cards on an old velvet cloth draped over her dining room table. That none of her predictions came true was never a deterrent.
He choked out a small laugh as he realized that his mom would probably really like Martha.
"You are awake, Rodney?"
Damnit, how did she move that bulk around so quietly?
Subtly dropping the beads back down on Sheppard's chest he turned to see Martha at the door of the hut.
"Your shepherd still lives," she said with a smile. "The Father has given him more time."
Then she stepped into the hut and as she moved toward him Rodney realized that her oversized frame had eclipsed his view of her two helper satellites coming in behind her. One carried what looked like a rolled mat and the other balanced two of the ubiquitous clay pots in her hands.
The three women bustled over to where Sheppard lay and went about rolling him onto his side, pulling free the now soiled mat he'd lain on and putting down a clean one. A lid was removed from the first pot and the hut filled with the stench of all manner of garbage rotting in the summer heat.
Putting a sleeve to his nose Rodney gagged. "Dear God, what is that?"
"It is durian fruit," Martha replied as she dug her fingers into the pot. She lifted free a clot of orange paste and showed it to Rodney. "The Father makes the durian for us. To eat, to cool the blood, to make good babies. Ketibaan durian runtuh. Your giant friend went out with David and the others and they come back with many fruit. It is very good luck, to find a fallen durian. It means Father wants the shepherd to live."
Rodney watched in horror as one of the girls tilted Sheppard's head up and Martha began wiping the gunk on his lips and gums.
Rodney held his breath, waiting for the gagging and vomiting to come but could only gape in awe as he saw Sheppard's tongue move in his mouth, then sneak out to lick some of the orange paste.
"See?" Martha exclaimed brightly. "Come, Rodney. You can feed the shepherd."
"Wha? What, who me?" Rodney stammered. "I … I don't…" but he reluctantly walked over and eased creakily down next to Sheppard's mat. He eyed the pot of durian with a grimace. The air was so heavy with humidity it barely moved and the stench was even more overpowering closer up.
With a shudder of revulsion, he dug two fingers in and tentatively spooned some paste into Sheppard's mouth. There was even more of a reaction this time, and it appeared as if the major was actually enjoying the flavor.
Curious, Rodney lifted a finger towards his own mouth but the smell was too strong. He pulled in a deep breath and touched the paste to his lips, then took the briefest of tastes.
Seconds later he was shoveling more of the delicious fruit into his mouth. It was creamy, nutty, like an almond and peach flavored custard.
"See?" Martha said, clearly pleased. He scooped up another two fingers then paused with the realization that he was temporarily forgetting his nursing duty. So he scraped some of it back in the bowl, then dabbed a little bit more in the now stirring man's mouth.
This time Sheppard actually seemed to smack his lips and then Rodney saw him swallow.
Despite the seeming miracle brought about by the stinky fruit, Rodney knew that what Sheppard really needed was water. He hadn't had a drop to drink in almost a day and any water left in his system had long been sweated or pissed away while he lay unconscious.
"Do you still have the water I made last night?" Rodney asked.
"Only a little bit," Martha said sadly. "We gave some to the giant and some to you last night."
Oh. That would explain why he wasn't as shaky this morning.
"Thank you, for that, and I'll take whatever we have. For Sheppard, of course. And I really hate to ask this, but… I have this … condition. It's called hypogly-- you know what? I need food. I, I know it sounds selfish but it is a real problem and--"
Martha just stared at him as he gibbered on and he would swear he saw her eyebrow rise in a rather Sheppardly manner. But she nodded and turned to the girl bearing the other pot. "My daughter, Miriam, can get something for you to eat."
"Oh. Miriam, that's a nice name," Rodney muttered while averting his eyes as she leaned over to give the pot to her mother. In the daylight the girls' state of undress was a little more glaring and a lot more disconcerting. And thinking of…
"Also, could… you... Could you get something to um," he waved his hands in a vague gesture in front of him. "A cover for the shepherd- for Sheppard, I mean."
Martha scowled and shook her head as she handed Rodney the remaining water. "The shepherd is already too hot. He needs no warmth."
Rodney sighed and scratched the back of his head in thought. Then he brightened. "You know the story of Adam and Eve?"
"Oh yesir," Martha beamed. "It was one of the first the fathers teach to us."
"Good, good. So, um, you remember, after uh, Eve bit the apple? Do you remember what happens next?"
He expression darkened but she nodded. Then the proverbial light bulb appeared over her head and she grinned, showing all of her betel-stained teeth. "Ohsir, yesir. The fathers tell us why they read this story. For first moon time they stay here they are always pink in the face and averted their eyes. Then they tell us why."
"Yes, that's right. So could you… do something… for Sheppard?"
She spoke a few words to the still as yet unnamed girl who left the hut and returned a minute later, dripping wet and holding a broad banana leaf.
She handed it to Rodney, who took it with a muttered, "Thanks, that's awfully… literal of you." He laid it strategically in place then sat back on his heels.
"Okay, Major, this time I mean business. You need to drink something." He slowly eased Sheppard's head up into his lap and tapped his chin. "C'mon, wake up enough for some water and you can have all the stinky fruit you want."
He was rewarded with a soft moan as Sheppard shifted his head towards the sound of Rodney's voice.
"There you go, Major." He shook the man's shoulder a little and felt relief wash over him as he saw Sheppard's eyes try to open. His lids were swollen and he only managed slivers, but Rodney could see they were fixed on him
"Mm-kay?"
"Yeah, it's me, Major. Sorry it's not Teyla but you're stuck with me."
"Whrrr… whaa…"
"Water first, then questions. And swallow this time." With the semi-conscious man's head propped against his chest, Rodney lifted the pot awkwardly with his good left hand and tipped it up to Sheppard's mouth. The first bit dribbled down his chin, running rivulets through the mud drawings on his chest but with a little patience, that Rodney was always told he never had, he managed to get Sheppard to swallow a few gulps.
By the time he was done there was only a little chalky white sediment left at the bottom, all that remained of the last of their water purification tablets.
When he was sure that Sheppard had swallowed it all down he let the man lay back down on his mat, fighting with himself not to just push the major away. Still early in the morning and it had to be a hundred and ten in the small humid hut. And Sheppard felt hotter than that.
"R-rodney?"
"We've already established that, Major. Good to see your brain hasn't been completely boiled," he muttered.
"Where are we? Is this…. hospital?"
"Do you see any pretty nurses or dull grey sheets?" Then he sighed, his attempt at banter completely lost on his dazed CO. "No, we're um… actually I'm not really sure where we are. Biak, still. Some uh, nice people found us. See?" He pointed over to where Martha still sat, beaming with delight as she watched them.
Sheppard turned his head and squinted through his swollen lids at her.
"That's Martha. Martha, this is Major John Sheppard."
"I am pleased to meet you, shepherd," she intoned in a clearly taught manner.
"M-ma'am," Sheppard managed to squeak out while he stared at her. It was funny, but Rodney had already almost gotten used to the big woman's mostly naked form and yarn hair. But he could see where the pilot might be convinced it was a fever-induced hallucination.
"Do you know the Father?" Martha asked solemnly.
"He's not ready to answer that question!" Rodney hurriedly broke in. T'he- the fever - makes him addlepated."
And maybe it wasn't too far from the truth.
"McKay?"
"Yes, Major. We have established that," he answered with a sigh.
"Whr are we?"
"A village. On Biak. In the middle of the godforsaken South Pacific. I, I don't know." He swiped sweat from his brow and sagged tiredly. Because the leg and septic infection wasn't enough, the smack of his face on the control panel of the Havoc had apparently, but rather unsurprisingly, left the pilot concussed, at least, as well.
"Are you… are you okay, McKay?"
Rodney looked down to see that Sheppard was looking at him, his brow wrinkled with concern.
"Me? Oh, great. I'm dandy. Peachy keen. Broken arm, starved and thirsty, and -" he stuttered to a stop as he glanced down to see Sheppard's hand balled into a white-knuckled fist and he was shaking.
His cracked wrist throbbed like a rotten tooth; he couldn't imagine what a leg that looked like Sheppard's must feel like.
"Martha, do you have any more of that… plant.. Stuff. The stuff you gave me that made my arm feel better?"
"The dawakawa?"
"Sure, yeah, um, the green plant paste you gave me last night. The dawa-dawa?" he echoed, the word as strange on his tongue as the taste had been. "Can you get some of that for the major?"
The big woman nodded and levered herself painstakingly to her feet. "Miriam will bring food and medicine."
"Where's Ronon?" Sheppard asked suddenly.
Yeah, where was their gunner? "Martha, do you know where Ronon - the giant man is?"
"He has gone off with my sons to find water. The giant said he was not afraid of the Japanese men who guard it."
The pilot groaned and shook his head restlessly. Rodney fought the desire to do the same. The big lunkhead had to play hero.
Martha gazed for a moment at Sheppard, then met Rodney's eyes. "You should pray for the shepherd, Rodney."
Rodney paled and colored at the same time. "Yeah, I'll get right on that. Thanks."
She nodded her acceptance, possibly not getting his sarcasm, and walked out of the hut into the rain.
Leaving Rodney alone with a dying man.
